In Conversation
by Soubrettina
Summary: Confession: I really love the Helsa (Hans/Elsa) ship. Other confession: yes, I completely understand what a terrible idea it would be for anyone to marry or have an affair with Hans, especially someone as vulnerable and sensitive as Elsa. But Hans wanted to put his case anyway... Hans and Elsa get very meta, discuss shipping generally, argue and drink wine.


"No."

"Really no?"

"Really no! Never. Not under any circumstances. I won't. I will not be Prince Hans' wife, I would not do it on my life. I will not do it for the throne, I will not do it all alone. I will not lie down with Prince Hans, I do not like him!"

"Well, except under AU circumstances."

"It would have to be extremely A, as you say, U. After what canonically happened? No, no way, never, you can't make me, _José._"

"My name's Hans."

"Whatever."

"Well I _could_ make you."

"You think?"

"Is that a challenge?"

"You _know_ what my magic can do. I know you know, because you didn't risk coming at me with arms alone. You came to talk me into agreeing to die."

"Forgive me if getting impaled or turned into an ice statue was something I wished to avoid."

"A _real_ monster-slayer would have risked it."

"If I were a brainless brute I wouldn't be having this dispute with you!"

"So it _is_ force, is it? You _would_ use force… to have my hand? Or just my body?"

"Oh, let's be quite clear: Iwon't sit here saying I would never force you, because I don't think you'd believe a word of it. Let me say I don't _intend_ to force you. We're talking about shipping, here. The shipping that says that we would be a happy couple, eventually. Whether I could blackmail you or get around your powers is irrelevant. I am putting it to you that conditions could occur in which you would happily, freely, lie down with me. And all that that implies. And probably want to marry me, eventually."

"Are you suggesting I would forgo marriage? With _you_?"

"Is it more or less likely than your waiting until we're married?"

"_I'm not going to marry you, Hans_. It's… unthinkable."

"I beg to differ. I've been thinking about it. I've actually been giving a great deal of thought to it. Almost constantly."

"Well stop it at once!"

"Well if I don't think about it, who will? I have no personal objections."

"You have no per- of course _you_ have no personal objections, why on Earth would _you_ have objections?"

"Well, I might not have liked you. I might have found you remote and emotionally closed. You were to Anna."

"I'm addressing that, if you don't mind."

"Oh good. You know I have problems with rejection."

"My heart bleeds for you."

"It is _true._"

"I'm sure it is. But you've over-used that excuse, in the extreme. You've exhausted anyone's sympathy."

"Everyone's?"

"Well, nearly everyone. Your fans are split as to whether you're misunderstood or whether we all understood you fine but it needn't be a problem. Don't get me wrong, I fully believe that your childhood was wretched; I can relate to that completely. I feel nothing but sympathy for a small Hans. If a Hans of about six were before me I'd forgive him almost anything and do my very best to give him a hug."

"I don't think he'd have let you."

"I'm not saying it wouldn't require patience."

"A twenty-four year old Hans, on the other hand…"

"Doesn't deserve hugging or anything… connected to it. What you did was not your brothers' fault, or your mother's fault, or your governess' fault, it was _yours_."

"In fairness, Elsa, I wasn't the only one who thought you were too dangerous to live. Yourself included."

"You were the only one who came to Arendelle planning to kill me anyway!"

"Now, that's not true, is it? I came to Arendelle planning to _marry_ you. I never did develop a proper plan about what to do with you when you turned out to be… unreceptive. I mean, pushing someone down the stairs? The only accident such an _indoor_ woman would be vulnerable to, and it's so crude and unreliable. Maybe poison, if it could look like a natural illness and after all you could have _been_ very ill for all Anna knew- would have almost made it easier for her, she might have stopped thinking that you were being so cruel to her. Actually, given the way you behaved, suicide wouldn't have seemed implausible- might not have even had to fake it, you might have only needed a bit of a push. Though in that case, why have you die at all? Your abdication and going into an institution would have been just as good…"

"Hans, are you actually aware of what is coming out of your mouth?"

"Don't take everything so personally. Why do people always take things personally? I've no vendetta against you, despite what certain people seem to think. I was trying to kill the queen. And, happily for me, a serious social menace. You, Elsa, yourself? I have no grudge against."

"That would be reassuring but for the fact I'm afraid _myself_ and the queen are somewhat inseperable."

"Look, I'm trying to explain that people get the wrong idea about… people like me."

"Which wrong idea are you referring to this time?"

"That I'm the sort who would do violence for the sake of doing violence. That I would _lash out_ at people. I'm very much not the lashing out sort. Lashing out is the province of people who are not in control of matters. I'm not violent to anyone without a very clear purpose, and that when charming, persuading, manipulating, intimidating and stealing are insufficient. In that order."

"How very conscientious of you."

"Practicality, Elsa. Ultimately, nothing else matters."

"Nothing else matters _to you_."

"I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Even most of my fans agree. I don't see things like other people."

"You got that from _Sherlock_."

"I know! Wouldn't you love to do a crossover with _Sherlock?_"

"Hans, make an important note to self, re: being Sherlock. Hans, you are not Sherlock."

"Would you go to bed with Sherlock?"

"You do know that's not a real diagnosis?"

"I'm not a real person. I'm given an estimated date of birth somewhere between 1815 and 1840, I shouldn't have any of that kind of vocabulary. If I could call it anything it would be moral insanity or perhaps egomania."

"Hans, don't try to get out of this by going all meta. That sort of argument gets us nowhere. Go out of universe and you can more or less do what you like."

"Point taken. I don't have to go out of universe. In-universe, I propose that you come to bed with me. On the grounds that you know there'd never be another pleasure quite like it."

"And in-universe, I refuse on the grounds that I'm not insane."

"Yes you are. In some ways. Sometimes."

"Well I'm not that sort of insane."

"Forgive me, my Queen, but you're exactly that sort of insane. You're prone to unstable emotions, chronic feelings of emptiness and problems with relationships, and you don't always have a good sense of self-preservation, do you?"

"I've been distressed, in the past. That's not the same as being mad enough to throw myself into the arms of a man who I know likes to break women."

"You don't know _that_. You don't know anything about my past with women. You've no evidence at all that I'm some kind of Don Juan character. I might be as pure as you are, for all you know. I might never have held a woman before Anna."

"Considering how you behaved towards Anna, have you considered that you don't really _want_ to touch women?"

"I think I assured you, I fully intended to get married."

"That wasn't what I asked."

"All I'm saying is, you know full well that you were never a notch on the bedpost to me. It was about, well, you. Always you. You were always-"

"-_preferable_, I know. It would sound very good but I do know _why_ I was 'preferable'. It doesn't exactly turn my head to know that getting the crown through me was simpler."

"Fair enough. But… you must realise I was hardly going to be the only one. You must have had letters from every royally-born bachelor in Europe; if not from them then from their parents. You're not telling me that they all truly loved you? Did I intend to do anything that our sort of people don't do a dozen times in every generation?"

"You know, Hans, you make these arguments, and you're right in a way-"

"Thank you."

"-I haven't finished. The repulsive thing, when one really thinks about it, isn't what you do but the appalling way you do it. I'm sure plenty of people wanted to marry me for mercenary reasons. I'm sure there were still enough who would have happily married Anna for mercenary reasons. And they might have appeared before us and made themselves amenable, but an ordinary decent sort of person would be unlikely in the circumstances to try to convince his intended that he was their ideal true love and had nothing in his character that was not identical to hers."

"I'm not doing that now."

"No, now you've tried to persuade me that it seemed reasonable at the time that you tried to kill me. It probably did to many people, but it didn't occur to anyone else that I should be broken to despair in order to do it."

"It was practical."

"It was _sadistic_. As was what you did to my sister."

"I couldn't have saved your sister. You know I didn't _truly_ love her. Even if I'd been honest, even you knew that to call it true love-"

"Oh don't do that again. You never said 'Anna I'm sorry but this isn't true love.' You put out the fire and told her how stupid she was to have thought someone loved her. And that's why I hate you, Hans. I can cope with you having tried to kill me. It was callous, but I wouldn't call it abuse. What you did to my sister, _that_ was abuse. It was preying on a lonely screwed-up kid who you could exploit for whatever you wanted and who would have blamed herself for what you did to her. The same way that she kept blaming herself for what I did to her. I love that girl like you can't imagine, Hans, and I know you can't so don't even try."

"Very touching."

"Q.E.D."

"I can assure you I wasn't actually planning to kill her. What would be the point?"

"Shut up. Just shut up. You calmly sit there drinking wine explaining how you could have used Anna, lounging around talking about practicality, trying to tell me that I might as well lie down with you seeing as you almost trampled her! Get out. Get out of my castle, get out of my kingdom, get out of my life!"

"I'm sorry, my Queen. We seem to be talking at cross-purposes. I never expected for a moment that you'd have tender feelings for me after what happened."

"You would be right not to, I assure you."

"Quite the opposite of tender, I should imagine. Violent feelings."

"More violent than is practical."

"Positively explosive. Pulses racing. Muscles tense. Feeling hot under your skin. Blood hammering in your head. Chest… oh will you look at that. _Heaving_. That's where it lies, doesn't it? It's quite a common sort of dream, you know. That dread, that _arousal_\- when comes back to you at night, your dreaming mind turn it into something else. Something that feels _good_."

"…Prince Hans!"

"…Ah, so you _do_ know what I'm alluding to?"

"It's not going to work, you know."

"I'm sorry. I may have got distracted by wishful thinking."

"What, you?"

"Your majesty, I know I'm practically by definition the shallowest man imaginable, but some feelings can thrive in shallow waters indeed."

"Are you talking about… lust, Hans?"

"My dear Koniginchen, what else? You are aware, I suppose, that you are quite… oh, you _do _know don't you?"

"I'm just a little surprised you care."

"Care? I've spent a little too much time shut up in small rooms on my own recently with very little to look at. I'm afraid I've had very few distractions from the memory of your face, except that of your legs, and your waist, and your breasts, and…"

"Yes, I think I understand. It's not that I don't believe you. It's just that the knowledge that you might simply desire me doesn't give me any sense of obligation to… well, anything, really. Sincerely wanting isn't the same as deserving and another person isn't a thing you should get as a prize."

"Oh, no. No, Elsa, I beg of you, never capitulate because I 'deserve' it. Never be less than overcome with love or passion for me, whichever will do."

"Why, you actually mean it, don't you?"

"You're surprised? What do you think my whole game was for, if not adulation?"

"Hans, I suggest you find a woman who does adore you. Really. Maybe not in Arendelle or in the Islands, but you can do that much. You're good-looking and charismatic. Plenty of people fall in love and take years to realise that they only loved their spouse because he or she was beautiful and they imagined the rest, even when their former beloved is not a bad person."

"That is a risk of being beautiful, my dear Queen."

"It's the best chance you have. If we're being _practical_, it's probably best that you're just kept for breeding."

"You mean, such as being a prince consort?"

"Nice try."

"So you don't need me to work as a stud, then?"

"I'm sure I'll manage, thank you."

"I understand. I'm sure Anna will give you a nephew who you can train properly. I mean, your whole family will live with you, right? You'll be a very hands-on aunt."

"I fully intend to be. It'll be wonderful."

"I mean, you don't _have_ to do the whole romantic love and motherhood thing. I mean, you wouldn't actually be a mother to Anna's children, and you'd have beautiful children if you did have them, but that's not an obligation. And I mean, you're very deeply loving and a lot of people have noticed how you're laying claim to a great deal of repressed sensuality, but, you know. You're complete as you are."

"I certainly am. And Hans, it's not as if you're the only man in the world."

"Isn't Oaken spoken for?"

"What? Oh Hans don't be ridiculous. You know what I mean."

"Well how many other flesh-and-blood men are there in this universe?"

"There's a whole country in this universe, actually. More than one whole country. I don't know why you think I'll be that hard to please."

"No, no, I know 'Elsa's perfect man' is out there. I know, he's minor nobility or bourgeois. Intellectual type. Probably scientifically minded. Understands geometry. Good looking but not in an immediately obvious way because he's a little geeky and absent-minded. Quietly adores you, but hangs back waiting for you to come round to it in your own sweet time…."

"Hans, are you getting at somebody's OC?"

"No I'm not, because it's not anyone's OC specifically, is it? He's a _type_. At least a dozen people have come up with him independently of each other."

"I hope you're not implying he's a flat character."

"Oh, he can _be_ rounded out. Sometimes it's not worth slogging through the rounding out, he's only there to perform a function. I'm just saying he's… recognisable. Everyone knows who he is and what he's going to be like. You're lucky. If only everyone's perfect partner was that obvious. He really is an 'other half' to you."

"Sounds preferable to you. Someone who it's a good idea for me to marry. It sounds a lot better to me than the Helsa ship. Even if we get over the whole attempted coup thing, it's still dysfunction ever after. I don't know what I've done to deserve that."

"Look, belligerent ships can work. Look at the whole _Pirates of the Caribbean_ fandom. No contradiction there between trying to kill each other- succeeding to kill each other, even- and following it up with a heady love affair.I mean it's more or less canon that they're all still open to the idea."

"Hans, note to self re: being Jack Sparrow. Hans, you are not Jack Sparrow. When Jack Sparrow talks of 'what a man can do, and what a man can't do', every adult in the theatre knew that it was going to turn out to be more than about the physically possible. Whereas if you said it, you would be completely literal."

"Would you go to bed with Jack Sparrow?"

"No."

"He never tried to kill you."

"Hans, most people haven't. Hardly anyone has tried to kill me, ever. The others who _did_ were doing so under orders. So why of all people on earth would I…"

"…because you would have conquered and subjugated me completely? I could be your tiger on a leash, yes? The man who would have slain you and taken everything that was yours, helplessly enthralled to you, begging for you to take pity and give him leave to worship you for the rest of his life."

"Really?"

"Um, well. In theory."

"In theory. But Hans, if you were not wielding a big pointed agenda, you wouldn't be yourself."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Narratively? Who would you be without your agenda? Just kindly take it away and stop trying to impale me on it."

"…point taken, your Majesty."


End file.
